WI: Napoleon waits until the Polish-Saxon Crisis erupts into war

The powers still regard him being put down for good as more important.


What if people actually got that the powers consider that extremely serious business?
 
Or maybe, just maybe, people stop claiming it's 100% inevitable that they stop in the middle of the war to unite against Napoleon?

I get that there's a 95% chance that happens, but if 95 times out of hundred that happens, then there's still 5 times out of 100 it doesn't.
 
Or maybe, just maybe, people stop claiming it's 100% inevitable that they stop in the middle of the war to unite against Napoleon?

When anything indicates that the powers would put a quarrel they can resume later over an immediate, universally (by said powers) agreed upon as awful, problem, you have a point.

Until then, people like me will continue to wonder if you can even find five scenarios in a thousand where the response is not "temporary armistice until Napoleon is dealt with".

Because there is absolutely nothing as important to the powers of the day. They can wait to resolve any and all of their quarrels with each other, they all see Napoleon's return as a disaster. This isn't something held together by British bribes or Russian (technically Alexanderine, but as tsar, his wishes determine policy here) quixoticism or Austrian prejudice.

I'm not going to say that they would immediately declare an end to the fighting as soon as he lands, but if Napoleon gets back on the throne, they're going to react like people who find him to be a threat without a very substantial change in attitudes on where his return is relative to other things.
 
Agreed, we may well refer to the 'two hundred days' rather than the hundred days or something like that, but as Napoleon has already consistently ignored treaties that he doesn't like, no-one in Europe is going to trust him to just sit on the throne of France and content himself with that, hence they will declare war to depose him.
 
And even if the powers Don't immediately decide to call an armistice to deal with Napoleon, by the time he returns for the 100 Days he doesn't have the Military to go up against them. Remember that in our time line it just took Britain and Prussia, the smaller of the two major powers allied against Napoleon, to beat him decisively.

Hell, it could probably be done by Austria or Russia alone. Austria has their Main Army camped in Baden with about as many Men as Napoleon was able to raise from All of France Combined under the command of a General who secured victories against The French and Napoleon himself.

By the time the Hundred Days begin, Napoleon has already Lost. Badly. Decisively. The mere fact he was back is a slap in the face to the Coalition Powers and proof positive he cannot be trusted at all ever (To put it in EUIII Terms, his Badboy was at around 87/12), and the France he has access to is in no way capable of fighting off all of Europe at the same time anymore, and the longer he stays the more permanently he'll cripple the entire country.

That's not changing without a Miracle, possibly a Literal one.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Even if Austria and Russia/Prussia stopped fighting one another in order to unite against Napoleon once more, what if it only happens after the armies of the respective nations had just spent most of a campaign season mauling one another across Central Europe?

And it must be remembered that Napoleon's army in 1815 was of a higher quality than that of 1814, with which he had performed military miracles.
 
Even if Austria and Russia/Prussia stopped fighting one another in order to unite against Napoleon once more, what if it only happens after the armies of the respective nations had just spent most of a campaign season mauling one another across Central Europe?

And it must be remembered that Napoleon's army in 1815 was of a higher quality than that of 1814, with which he had performed military miracles.

Then he still has a shortage of horses and a shortage of opportunities, and both powers are still set on his destruction.

Napoleon's miracles of 1814 are impressive, but they're not going to win him survival in power.
 
If Napoleon marches in 1815, then there will be butterflies related to Saxon-Polish Crisis. Napoleon takes power in France, Britain reacts immediately, for obvious reasons, accompanied by dispatched forces from Prussia, Austria and Russia.

Now it is possible that the Prussians and Russians could send a smaller force then they did OTL to respond to Napoleon? Possibly. The Polish-Saxon Crisis may end more favorably in this round, or it may not, depending on how bad the Austrians are hit when they face off against Lil Nappy.
 
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